WITH memories of bullies rubbing sandpaper across his face still fresh in his mind, 20-year-old Dafydd Jones is launching a one-man campaign to protect pupils from harassment.

Dafydd endured years of bullying between 1994 and 1999 while studying at Ysgol Eifionydd in Porthmadog.

He is adamant that pupils should not be forced to endure the experiences he went through and is determined to make teachers and AMs aware of just how miserable the lives of many pupils in Wales now are.

He explained, "I'm trying to raise awareness and show that something needs to be done now because tomorrow someone could be dead. My main point is to get effective anti-bullying polices into all schools and not just a few."

His appearance on the July 10 edition of S4C current affairs programme Y Byd Ar Bedwar seemed to touch a nerve with viewers. Around 800 people have sent him e-mails describing their own experiences at the hands of bullies.

Dafydd does not pretend to be a social worker or a psychologist, and rather than offering solutions to policymakers he hopes instead to alert them to the scale of the problem.

News reports at the start of the summer of the death of Thomas Thompson, 11, who died after taking 12 pills at his home in Wallasey following relentless bullying, have given Dafydd's campaign a new urgency.

"I think no child should go so far as to kill themselves," he said.

But if bullying is to stop, tackling the behaviour must be a priority of the education establishment. He acknowledges that teachers alone cannot be expected to guarantee a pupils's safety.

He said, "At the end of the day they are only paid to educate the children. They are not paid to be their protectors.''

Dafydd is keen for schools to do more to end bullying on the buses.

It was while on a bus outside Ysgol Eifionydd that he was attacked with sandpaper.

"I had scars on my face for a long time," he said.

He is intimately aware of the deeper hurt bullying can cause to a person's self-esteem.

Comforting-eating seemed to offer an escape from the grinding unhappiness, but soon he weighed 16 stone. Later, he began rapidly shedding weight and was diagnosed as suffering from bulimia. He now weighs 11st.

Other pupils around the nation, he believes, are suffering similar experiences.

Dafydd is convinced that ending such misery is essential if the dignity of individual children is to be respected.

"Everybody's got the right to a nice childhood," he said. "I look back at hurt, pain and anger."

While applauding the NSPCC for its work and also commending services he used such as Childline, he would like to see pupils having people in whom they could confide available to them. Dafydd, whose parents split up when he was young, was reluctant to tell his mother.

He explained, "I didn't feel comfortable talking to her. I found it hard to admit I was being bullied."

When his grandmother died in his second year at the school his loneliness was compounded. "When she died it was one of the hardest parts of my life," he said. "To go back to school and carry on with the bullying was very, very hard."

Dafydd is now a DSS worker, and is also hoping to make a television documentary and a campaign video. The website, its name inspired by his 6ft 7ins height, will be launched in September as www.standingtall.org.uk.

He urges anyone wishing to tell his or her story to contact him by e-mailing: dafydd@standingtall.org.uk